International travel was a far different experience several decades past, when travelers boarded ships and journeyed for days over the same distances airliners cover in just hours today. In 1952, crossing the Atlantic by jet was still six years away, and speed across the water was still important for oceanliners. One of the greatest ocean liners became the pride of America and the fastest liner to cross the Atlantic when it entered service. The SS United States was a majestic symbol of design innovation and she proved her might by sailing across the Atlantic in three days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes. It’s a record she still holds today, decades after her retirement. Now, efforts to preserve her have reached their end. Next week, the SS United States will embark on her final voyage, where she’ll be towed to Florida to become an artificial reef.
Ocean liners are a dying breed. From the end of the Industrial Revolution to the dawn of the jet age, the most common way to cross vast expanses of ocean was to board a ship. These weren’t like today’s leisure-oriented cruise ships, but designed primarily to transport people between ports. Some historians place the birth of the true transatlantic ocean liner in the 19th century, when ships like the SS Great Western took to the seas. The Great Western entered service in 1838 and was a paddle-wheel steamer with auxiliary sails, a far cry from marvels like the SS United States, but planted the seeds for the future.
The SS Great Western took 14 days to cross the Atlantic at a maximum speed of 8.5 knots. Over time, transatlantic ocean liners grew in size, power, and speed. If you were lucky enough to be wealthy, you got to experience an environment no aircraft could replicate today. Ships became celebrities in their own right, from the lavish SS Normandie to the futuristic SS Europa. For over 100 years, ocean liners were the premier way to travel.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, the ocean liner is largely irrelevant in the modern day. The ocean liner couldn’t compete with the speed and the wonder of the jet airliner. The vast majority of ocean liners have been erased from existence, scrapped once their useful lives were over. Just a handful of ocean liners remain with perhaps the most famous being the Queen Mary, which is currently a museum ship with its own struggles in staying afloat. Some ships, like the Queen Elizabeth 2, made it to the 21st Century before retirement. Today, the only purpose-built ocean liner still in service is the Queen Mary 2, and she’s fulfilling more of a cruise ship role now.
Next week, another great ocean liner will disappear below the waves.
After a long and expensive battle to keep the SS United States around came to an unfortunate end, the SS United States Conservatory sold its namesake ocean liner to Okaloosa County in Florida’s Panhandle for $10 million. Next week, the ship will leave her nearly three-decade-long berth in Philadelphia and towed offshore of the Destin-Fort Walton Beach, where she will be sunk to become the world’s largest artificial reef. But it’s not all bad news.
America’s Flagship
You may wonder why so much of the Internet cares about a rusting hulk of metal right now. As I said before, ocean liners haven’t been relevant in decades. But the SS United States was more than just any ocean liner.
The best resource for history on this marvel of a ship is none other than its now former caretaker, the SS United States Conservancy. The organization says the story of the ship begins with her architect, William Francis Gibbs. He was born in 1886 and had no formal training in designing ships. In fact, Gibbs was about as far from an architect as you could get, as he was a real estate attorney.
However, ships were in Gibbs’ blood. At Harvard College, he learned some science and engineering while poring over plans for British battleships. This didn’t go anywhere, but even as an attorney, Gibbs had a dream. He wanted to build the fastest ship the world had ever seen. Gibbs quit law in 1916 to devote all of his time to making this dream come true. The Conservancy says few thought he’d actually achieve it.
Gibbs got his first shot at his dream when J.P. Morgan, Jr., one director of the International Mercantile Marine (IMM), believed Gibbs and his brother Frederic could deliver. Unfortunately for Gibbs, America would enter World War I and IMM would ultimately bail on financing the project. But not all would be lost because, due to some clever document writing, Gibbs was able to put himself and his Gibbs Brothers firm in charge of the restoration of the requisitioned German liner Vaterland, where he got to put his work on what would become the largest American-flagged ship in the Atlantic. This ship would go on to become the Leviathan and sailed for the United States Lines.
The Gibbs Brothers firm, later renamed Gibbs & Cox, went on to design innovative ships for the United States Lines. Some of these ships became famous, like the SS America. Gibbs was also obsessed with lacing his ships with the latest in technology and studying what others were doing. But his dream of the world’s fastest ship was still unfulfilled, and Gibbs would have to wait through another world war before he would be able to take another crack at it. Reportedly, Gibbs & Cox was responsible for over 70 percent of the ships America used in the war, including the iconic Liberty ships.
Before we continue, the SS America is another United States Lines ship to meet an unfortunate end.
She served the United States Lines and the United States Navy from 1940 to 1964. After, the ship would be passed from owner to owner, eventually getting taken out of service entirely. Her fate was unknown before she was saved by an owner wanting to restore the SS America into a hotel ship. She was renamed the SS American Star and an attempt was made to tow the ship to Thailand. Tow lines snapped during a thunderstorm and the ship ended up wrecked at Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. Over the course of about two decades, the wreck rusted and eroded away into the sea.
The SS United States will at least be able to go out with some form of dignity. The Conservancy continues with her construction:
With the end of the war, Gibbs’ plans for the “Big Ship” were revived. The economic, political and technological conditions were finally aligned. The United States Lines needed a running mate for the America, finally starting its intended career as a trans-Atlantic liner. The U.S. government also realized the value of having luxury liners that could be converted into troop ships, as the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth had done during the war. When the military conflict in Korea escalated in the late 1940s, the US government agreed to subsidize a large part of the new liner’s cost and operating expenses, with the understanding that it could be requisitioned for military purposes.
The ship’s keel was laid on February 8th, 1950 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, one of the most well respected shipyards on the East Coast, with a long history of contracts with the U.S. Navy. The ship that would become known as the SS United States became the first major liner to be built in a dry dock, which both simplified the construction process and facilitated William Francis Gibbs’ obsession with secrecy.
Dry dock construction was not Gibbs’ only introduction of new shipbuilding techniques for the United States. The design incorporated the most rigid U.S. Navy standards, including strict compartmentalization to combat flooding, and dual engine rooms to provide power in case one was immobilized. The low and graceful superstructure was built entirely in aluminum, which gave the ship a dead weight of 45,400 long tons, compared to the 77,000 long tons for the similarly sized Cunard Queens. Her lighter weight allowed her to take full advantage of the astonishing 247,785 horsepower produced by her turbines. Unusually, all of her engine spaces were complete on her launch, thanks both to being built in a dry dock and Gibbs’ introduction of modular construction, which cut down the construction time to sixteen months. Over 3,100 shipyard workers took the project from keel laying to delivery date in an astounding two years and three months.
The Conservancy continues that because of the ship’s dual purposes, it wasn’t like a typical ocean liner. Gibbs was obsessed with ensuring the SS United States was fireproof. He demanded that the ship couldn’t have the presence of wood anywhere. He almost got his wish, too. The only wooden items in the ship were the Steinway grand pianos and the butcher blocks used by the ship’s chefs, and they had to insist on these wooden items. The ship was also lined in asbestos while other items were made out of aluminum.
Gibbs’ obsession with fire safety also expanded to decor and furniture. Dorothy Marckwald of Smyth, Urquhart & Marckwald was challenged with filling 23 public rooms, 395 staterooms, and 14 first-class suites with world-class decor while making sure all of it used textiles that were non-flammable.
Marckwald designed an interior featuring bold colors contrasted with white walls and black floors. Artwork was made out of glass, and unsurprisingly, the ship was proudly American in its theming. Red, white, and blue were common colors in addition to the ship containing patriotic art. Marckwald even got to prove that her artwork was just as fireproof as it was beautiful – Gibbs set fire to a mock-up of a room and none of the cabin fittings burned.
When finished, the SS United States stretched 990 feet, weighed 53,330 tons, and was powered by a quartet of Westinghouse double-reduction geared steam turbines good for 240,000 shaft horsepower. She was basically a small town, housing up to 1,984 passengers and up to 1,444 crew within her 12 decks. As a troop carrier, she’d be able to transport 14,000 soldiers and house 400 hospital beds. The U.S. Department of Transportation also notes that she had watertight doors up to the “A” deck, helpful for staying afloat even after taking on damage in a potential battle situation.
The Conservancy continues that the ship wasn’t just a thing of beauty, but the fastest ocean liner to sail the Atlantic:
Upon her delivery to the United States Lines, the SS United States was most graceful, modern, powerful and sleek vessel in the world. With her two oversize red, white, and blue funnels, she projected a powerful and romantic image of maritime travel, one that recalled the first great record-breaking liners of the twentieth century.
[…]
Advance publicity for the SS United States had primed the American public for a record-breaking vessel. Secrecy was tight during the builder’s trials in June of 1952, but it was later learned that the vessel exceeded 38 knots, or 44 miles per hour. She traveled 20 knots in reverse. On July 3rd, 1952, the SS United States set forth on her much-anticipated maiden voyage, timed to coincide with the national Forth of July celebrations. Her commander, Commodore Harry Manning—a celebrity in his own right, who had been a co-pilot of Amelia Earhart—carefully avoided any promises of a record-breaking run, especially when the ship encountered a fog bank during the first day out. Once clear of the hazard, Commodore Manning, with typical bravado, ordered the ship’s engines to be increased to full power. The ship’s speed, combined with the gale force winds and heavy seas, created on-deck conditions that kept most passengers inside—or at least in the enclosed promenades. So strong was the wind speed that the adventurous few who did venture out onto the open decks likened facing forward to being punched in the face. Miraculously, the dreaded vibration expected on high-speed liners was virtually absent, even when the ship attained her highest-ever service speed of 36 knots.
How fast was she? The SS United States sailed from the Ambrose lightship in New York Harbor to Bishop Rock in the UK in 3 days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes. The record was previously held by the RMS Queen Mary for 14 years and the SS United States beat it by over 10 hours. Reportedly, the SS United States sailed so fast that the ship’s fresh hull paint wore off during the journey. Attaining the Hales Trophy and winning the Blue Riband secured the fame of the SS United States. The ship became a point of pride for America and quickly became known as the “America’s Flagship.”
Travelers from all over the world booked trips on the world’s fastest ocean liner. As with any famous ship, her passengers included celebrities, with the Conservancy listing out a handful including “Bob Hope, Princess Grace of Monaco, Salvadore Dali, Rita Hayworth, Harry Truman, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Duke Ellington.” The SS United States even became the set of popular films of the day.
Decline
The SS United States Conservancy notes that the ship was so popular that she operated at capacity into the late 1950s even though travelers were increasingly boarding jet aircraft. Once the popularity of jet aircraft took off it wasn’t long before planes were carrying more people over oceans than ocean liners were.
The SS United States didn’t stay at capacity for long as the ship encountered rough seas in the 1960s. Even the ship’s fame couldn’t convince travelers to take the slow multi-day trip on water versus flying over it in mere hours. The United States Lines found itself in trouble.
Not only was it facing declining passenger volumes, but labor disputes and struggles with operating subsidies from the government meant the line was bleeding out. Those labor strikes also meant the cancellation of trips. If you bought a ticket you had no idea if you were actually going to sail or not. Then, the US Department of Commerce decided to stop sending troops on ships, too, as it was believed a ship could be a target for a Soviet bomber.
The line tried to stem the bleeding by running its liners as cruise ships and by selling the SS America in 1964. Nothing worked and the United States Lines was sold to a new owner in 1968. Sadly, the ship was costly to keep running and in 1969 she was withdrawn from service and laid up without warning. Thankfully, since the SS United States was a reserve ship for the US Navy, it was stored in an operational state, ready to sail if the military needed it. But that lasted for just a decade. The Conservancy notes what happened next:
In 1978, the US Navy decided the ship was no longer relevant to their needs, and the ship was listed for sale. She then passed from owner to owner, each with big plans for her future:
RICHARD HADLEY, of Seattle, planned to convert the vessel into seagoing time-share condominiums. After his financing collapsed, he had the ship’s interior fittings auctioned off in 1984.
FRED MAYER, who bought the ship in 1992, sought to create a running mate for Cunard’s QE2. He had the ship towed to Turkey and then Ukraine for hazardous material removal, and then towed back to Philadelphia in 1996, where she has remained since.
EDWARD CANTOR bought the ship with dreams of returning it to seagoing service. The ship was put up for sale after his death in 2002.
NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINE purchased the vessel in 2003 and announced plans to rehabilitate the ship as part of its American-flagged cruise service. The global economic crisis caused these plans to founder, and the vessel was again listed for sale in 2009.
After NCL’s efforts to sell the ship were unsuccessful, NCL began accepting bids from scrappers. This announcement spurred the SS United States Conservancy to launch its “Save Our Ship” Campaign to build public support for the vessel, prevent her sale for scrap and raise funds for her purchase and restoration. In July of 2010, the Conservancy announced that it had received a leadership grant from Philadelphia philanthropist H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest enabling the ship’s purchase as well as upkeep for 20 months. This marked the first time in the vessel’s history that a group concerned primarily with the vessel’s historical significance and preservation has owned her. While the Conservancy’s purchase of the SS United States granted it a crucial reprieve, she has not yet been “saved.” Funds must yet be raised for her restoration and redevelopment. The Conservancy envisions a future where the SS United States is a sustainable waterfront attraction, providing jobs and important public amenities, while educating and inspiring future generations.
The ship has remained an empty shell of its former self after the 1984 auction of the ship’s interior and after the asbestos removal procedures from the early 1990s.
The Future
Unfortunately, the Conservancy’s future is not one that will happen. The ship has been laid up in Philadelphia since 1996 and next week, she will be moved for the first time in nearly 30 years, but not to become a restored symbol of innovative engineering.
The ship is currently parked at Pier 82, owned by Penn Warehousing. In 2011, the Conservancy entered into an agreement with Penn Warehousing to pay $850 a day to stay at Pier 82. In August 2021, Penn Warehousing doubled the rent to $1,700 a day, citing maintenance costs as the reason for the increase.
The Conservancy continued to pay the original $850 a day rent. By March 2022, Penn Warehousing terminated the berthing agreement, taking the Conservancy to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where it sought the ship’s eviction and $160,000 in back rent.
Ultimately, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, the case went to a bench trial in January 2024. In June 2024, U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody ended the dispute by handing both parties a sort of partial win. Judge Brody pointed out how the 2011 berthing agreement didn’t have a provision for Penn Warehousing to change the “lay up dockage fee.” The Conservancy was found not to owe Penn Warehousing any back rent. However, the judge also noted that the berthing agreement was legally able to be terminated with enough notice, which the Court believed was provided.
The SS United States was given a deadline to leave the pier, forcing the Conservancy to scramble to secure a new berth somewhere else and the funding to make it happen. Susan Gibbs, conservancy president and granddaughter of William Francis Gibbs, pointed out that moving the SS United States isn’t going to be easy or cheap: “Relocating a ship the size of the SS United States (53,000 gross tons and 990 feet in length) is complex and costly. It requires funds for insurance, tugs, surveys, and dock preparations to ensure the ship’s safe passage to a new home.”
Unfortunately, while the Conservancy was able to buy some time, efforts to secure a new home in time have failed. The Conservancy’s last resort to prevent the ship from being scrapped was to sell it so it could become an artificial reef. This emergency scenario became a reality and last month, Okaloosa County purchased the ship in a deal expected to take around 1.5 years and around $10.1 million to complete. In it, the county will sink the ship to turn it into the world’s largest artificial reef, driving the local tourist economy. Some of the money will be used to create a museum run by the Conservancy which will contain artifacts and history.
On November 14, tugs will attach to the SS United States and tow her to Pier 80. Then, once low tide hits on November 15, the ship will be hauled out down the Delaware River. The low tide will allow the ship to clear numerous bridges with room to spare. From there, the tow is expected to take 14 days and the ship will end up at Mobile, Alabama, where it will be prepared to be scuttled. If you’re interested in tracking the ship’s final journey, click here to get a tracker once the ship is on the move.
Once the ship is sunk, Okaloosa expects an immediate burst of divers going down to explore the ship. Over time, ocean life will also find it as home. Gibbs says: “Converting the world’s fastest ship into the world’s largest artificial reef will write a new chapter for the SS United States as a world-class destination.”
On one hand, it seems that such a historic ship deserves a better fate than the cards it was dealt. The SS United State should stand proud as an example of beauty and engineering in metal. At the same time, the ship’s long story is another sad example that you cannot save everything, even if what you want to save used to be a symbol of pride for the nation. Thankfully, while the ship may sink, its memory and history will live on.
I think in light of recent events, intentionally sinking the United States is very ironic and appropriate.
This was a great read Mercedes!
As a kid in the 1960s, I occasionally accompanied my grandfather to the docks in NYC. He had a ship freight-forwarding business, and some cargo went on ocean liners as well as freighters.
I got to visit the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary; sadly, I only saw the United States from the docks around 1967, not long before she went out of service. The ship in Philly is a sad ghost of the ship I once saw in New York.
I’ll never get you on a slow boat to china,
All to myself, alone….
I live right next door in Pensacola, Florida, which is Escambia County. Okaloosa County is Fort Walton Beach, which is where my parents live. While it’s sad that such a magnificent ship won’t be brought back to its former glory, it could hardly find a lovelier resting place – this stretch of the Panhandle is nicknamed “The Emerald Coast” for its clear green-blue waters. It will be one hell of a dive, and the fishery will love it. It makes me wish I was young and healthy enough to get my scuba certificate. There’s already the Underwater Museum of Art next door in Walton County waters: https://www.panhandlegetaways.com/sites/default/files/styles/huge/public/paragraphs/images/callouts/center/uma_underwater_art.jpg
Florida Man approves.
What a great article. We need more of these interesting, educational, and not too technical articles. I am surprised none of the worlds super rich didn’t buy it and refit it as the world’s largest yacht. In that note why aren’t today’s cruise ships considered Ocean Liners?
Probably because they are a destination in themselves, and not a way to get from one place to the other. They were built for a specific purpose, which became obsolete in the age of air travel. Cruise ships came later, built for pure leisure.
The closest cruise terminal to me goes back and forth to Cozumel. There are better ways to get to Cozumel if you just need to get to Cozumel. But if you want to take your time putting down there on a giant ship filled with all sorts of amenities, it’s great.
^ What Joe said. Ocean liners are ships that carry out scheduled, point-to-point service for the purpose of transportation. Luxurious fittings may be installed to accommodate the wealthy, but that is not where the line makes its money (or at least that was the case during the golden era).
Cruise ships are intended to be a destination in themselves. Although they do often have scheduled port-of-call visits, the purpose of the voyage is leisure, and passengers stay with the ship for the return home.
Late to the party here, but ocean liners have a fundamentally different design from cruise ships.
Ocean liners have to be able to keep a schedule regardless of the weather, so they tend to be stronger, sleeker, faster and more stable, enabling them to carry on through heavy seas that a cruise ship would often have to avoid.
You’ll notice how they tend to have a longer bow to keep waves off the superstructure.
The stern also tends to be rounded, allowing the ship to continue safely in following seas, without the slamming effect that would happen with a flat stern like a cruise ship has.
Balconies will be higher up to keep them safe, and even things like the lifeboats are often up higher.
The Queen Mary 2 had to get special approval to have the lifeboats higher up than regulations typically allow.
Apparently the QM2 used 50% more steel in its construction than a cruise ship of the same size.
There are other differences too, but these are some of the main ones.
I’m struggling to think of a good analogy here, but I would consider ocean liners to be the peak of ship design, whilst cruise ships, although impressive, don’t have nearly so many considerations, and are often worse hull designs. They simply get around it by avoiding rough seas, and being so huge that the side effects are lessened.
While I’m sad it will be sunk, the magic of the ship was the non-flammable interior fittings that were quite mid century modern. Once those were sold, it would have simply cost too much to restore for use.
I don’t think I’d take an ocean liner to travel, but I would be up for a return of Zeppelins. 80 kts in the comfort of a cabin would be enough to keep me out of an airliner.
You need to see the luxury of first class cabins of ocean liners. Today’s 5 Star hotels are motels by comparison. And the modern amenities they added at the build were like Formica and laminate of their times.
I’d love for Mercedes to do an article on the opulence of ocean liners back in the day. They were better than a 5 Star hotels now with better service better quality and more room.
I don’t know how the Autopian TV episodes displayed get selected versus an article’s content, but it did make me laugh when your 300 HP Sea-Doo review showed up while discussing a completely different type of watercraft.
Yes these days it’s reserved for swinger cruises and diarrhoea connoisseurs.
Well honestly the artificial reef does seem a nicer end than scrap at least.
You can’t save everything. But think of preservationists as the world’s most dramatic hoarders. What a reality show
Bittersweet but cool. I learned to dive in that area while I was stationed at Tyndall and I’m a huge saltwater nerd. Would have been great to see it used as a waterfront facility, but this is a really awesome 2nd choice.
The United States, a charismatic relic of its 20th century heyday, is being intentionally scuttled because no one was willing to pay to maintain it. This should not – we stress, NOT – be taken as a metaphor for anything.
The United States will be scuttled off Florida… totally not a metaphor.
This is one instance where I would love to see the “captain” go down with the ship.
Draw your own conclusions please.
Florida itself will be scuttled soon enough.
Wait it wasn’t already?
I knew the writing was on the wall when the previous owners before the conservatorship allowed scrappers to come in and sell off all the fixtures. Lots of hand-made railings, crown mouldings, door knobs, light fixtures, pretty much anything metal got yoinked like it was an abandoned building in South Philly. Some of it got sold to collectors, but a lot of it got melted down. Entire cabins had their walls and bathroom fixtures removed, leaving nothing but open spaces with gaping holes into the decks below.
America doesn’t give a shit about history if it can’t be actively financially exploited.
No joke. You can’t go see it unless you have a base pass, but the same applies to the historic launch pads and facilities at Cape Canaveral. Most have fallen to ruin or been bulldozed
So what you’re saying is, sell them to Elon Musk.
As an employee of, no please don’t do that. We really really need to preserve the ones that are left
So what you’re saying is, sell them to Elon Musk.
That was all done in the ’80s and ’90s, it was already a gutted shell when it arrived in Philadelphia. There are very few doors left on the ship, but all the ones I’m familiar with have pulls/knobs, also, the pool still has its original decorative railings and light fixtures, and there is trim left around the elevator doors, but everything else was stripped as the wallboard had to go in the asbestos removal, along with the ceilings and partition walls between cabins
The Conservancy has done a lot of scrapping though, cutting up boilers, fuel and water tanks, and anything made of Monel alloy, including cutting a big hole through the pool basin to test whether it was viable to scrap (it wasn’t, due to the way the thin layer of Monel is plated on). Never a good sign when the group with the mission to save the ship are the ones cutting up and scrapping some of the few remaining parts of it, but they had bills to pay
Also, the shipyard in Ukraine did scrap the lifeboats and davits in the 90s as a result of non-payment for their asbestos removal work. But, the auction that stripped the ship of all furniture, fixtures, fittings, and art was done in the 80s, and the rest of the gutting was 90s, and it’s been small scale scrapping of bits here and there a few times since, mostly under the current owners
They over extended themselves and used what they had to pay off bills.
Crossing the Atlantic via ocean liner would be a cool experience.
But on a modern day behemoth of a cruise ship with 10k other people?
That sounds like hell.
Turns out it costs about the same as a plane ticket. When we move back to the uk in a couple of years, my wife and I have discussed this route
On a smaller scale, my wife and I moved from Oregon to Florida in 2016. We downsized as many possessions as we could, then we loaded up a Club Wagon XLT van with as much as we could carry and a 23-foot camper trailer with the rest, and took two months going on an epic, 5500-mile Great American Road Trip. It ended up costing roughly the same as we would have spent having a moving company move us, flying out, and putting cars on transports. By the time we had been doing it for several weeks, I wondered if I ever wanted a house again.
We knew we would never have another chance for something like that, and I am so glad we took it.
The only ocean liner on the Atlanric is the Queen Mary 2, it isn’t a cruise ship, and it carries 2,700 people at full capacity, which isn’t very crowded, as it’s over 149,000 gross tons
Can confirm. We traveled from Southampton to New York on her last year, and it was a delightful experience.
Not at all crowded, and the ship is such an odd layout that you can easily find quiet areas at any time.
the sunken ships of the Florida coastline are wonderful dives. This will be a great addition to the panhandles dive industry. Hope to dive it in the next year or so.
Thanks for a thorough and well-researched article about this beautiful ship. I snagged a picture of it with another doomed vehicle last time I was in Philly.
Ne m’appelez plus jamais “France”,
La France elle m’a laissé tomber…
Ne m’appelez plus jamais “France”,
C’est ma dernière volonté…
Que le plus grand navire de guerre
Ait le courage de me couler
Le cul tourné à Saint-Nazaire
Pays breton où je suis né
Ne m’appelez plus jamais “France”,
La France elle m’a laissé tomber…
Ne m’appelez plus jamais “France”,
C’est ma dernière volonté…
———–
Don’t ever call me “France” again,
France was the one that let me down
Don’t ever call me “France” again,
This is my last wish…
May the largest battleship,
Find courage enough to sink me,
My butt pointed to Saint-Nazaire,
To Brittany, where I was born…
Unfortunately maintaining old steel ships is extremely expensive. Factor in the size and hull surface area of a ship the size of United States, and you end up with a massive budget just to keep the thing from turning into Swiss cheese and sinking at its moorings. Turning United States into a reef is sadly the best possible outcome for it now. Queen Mary (a gorgeous ship you absolutely should tour if you are near Long Beach) has the massive upkeep costs but it is also an established local landmark and is able to bring in a substantial amount of money from tours, events, weddings, etc.
The difficulty in keeping up museum ships can be seen in the fate of America’s decommissioned super carriers. They’re marvels of engineering and symbols of national power. Yet the last carrier that will likely ever be preserved is the comparatively small USS Midway. The larger carriers that followed her have all either been scrapped or sunk. Enterprise was impossible to save because they had to dismantle the ship to remove the reactors. But all of the carriers before her but after Midway were also oil burners. Once tonnage approaches or exceeds 100,000 it becomes very hard to realistically support it as a museum. The Navy also very much wants to avoid having to take a decrepit ship back after a museum has folded and then devote a hefty chunk of their budget to disposing of it.
Rest well United States. She served her original purpose and now it’s time to start a new journey.
The flip side to being really hard to maintain in a functional existence is that sunken steel ships last a really long time as wrecks. If thought and preparation goes into their resting place, they can live on for a really long time in a different role.
Well as the natural sea life grows on the artificial ship it creates a natural reef that lives on after the rusty hull is gone
The thing I’ve heard suggested multiple times is that with various shipyards around the U.S. now abandoned with the shrinking of the shipbuilding industry after the 1970s that there’s an abundance of dry docks the ships could be permanently ex-sea moored at. It’s a lot easier to take care of a giant hunk of metal when it’s under a roof and not in corrosive salt water. There are a lot of smaller ships from before the 1920s, mostly wooden hulled vessels, that we did the same thing with, but it seems nobody really deemed it financially worthwhile to do it with an oceanliner, a destroyer, or a supercarrier. Although the thing breaking under it’s own weight even if placed in a sand bed would be a major concern…
To what end?
To preserve the ships. I’m pretty sure the only ships the U.S. have ever successfully kept afloat long term are the Revolutionary War, Mexican-American War, and World War II Ships. Excluding the Constellation which didn’t even really participate we don’t even have any of the Civil War era ships on display in museums, only replicas and hulks.
Queen Mary had run at a loss for the vast majority of its time in Long Beach, because the mixed use development that was supposed to happen on the adjacent land, which would have complimented the ship and brought in most of the revenue, never happened, and the conversion work on the ship itself was badly bungled, leaving large portions gutted and empty and other large portions underutilized
Also, it was supposed to be dry docked every 30 years to renew the anti corrosion epoxy coating on the hull, but the only accessible dry dock large enough was at the Long Beach Navy Yard, which closed and was filled in in the 90s, so that never happened, and now it’s coming due for what should have been it’s second maintenance period, and the first one was never done. Supposedly, the coating is holding up a lot better than they predicted in the 1960s, but it really is going to need dry docking at some point, and the amount of structural elements the city ripped out means the ship is not capable of being safely towed any real distance without breaking up and sinking, so it would have to be a floating dock of some sort.
They did just recently repaint the entire ship for the first time since the 1980s, but they didn’t do any rust repair and just went right over the rotting shell plating on the Promenade deck (which is rusting because of the drainage system on the deck above being partially removed and blocked up), and the bridge wings are still too rusted to stand on. Also, they didn’t prep the surfaces right, so the new paint is blistering and peeling off in a number of places.
I believe you can electrify the hull and keep rust to a minimum. Not positive on that.
My Dad has been a contributing member of the Conservancy since probably the late 80’s. Because of him I know a fair amount about it. In his office he has photos, a calendar, even a two-foot wooden model of the ship.
In the early 60’s he was stationed in Germany with the Army; when he was finally dispatched home by ship, he says the United States passed them while leaving Europe, went back to Europe while they were halfway across, and the troop ship had to stand off upon arrival in New York to let the United States dock in front of them again. So he’s been kind of in awe of it ever since then.
Dad’s 85 now, and when I heard this news yesterday, I asked him if he wanted to drive to Philadelphia this weekend to go see it one more time. He thought for a second, and then replied, “No, I think it would just make me too sad.”
I’m a bit of an ocean liner enthusiast, mostly centered on the Titanic, but I’m learning a bit more about other liners as time goes by. I think the worst thing that happened to the United States was when her interior was gutted and sold off. Once they did that, there wasn’t much left to preserve. She’s just an empty shell, and it’s a lot harder to build everything back from scratch, and a lot less appealing to potential investors. I think her fate was sealed then. Many of the more avid ocean liner enthusiasts, including those who donated money to keep her afloat over the years, have come to the same conclusion. Not every old liner can end up like the Queen Mary, unfortunately.
That said, I like the idea of an artificial reef. That will ensure that she’s always remembered, and will continue to receive visitors for decades to come. And of course, an excellent habitat for all the undersea critters.
So basically the ocean liner equivalent of David Tracy removing a Jeep interior, and letting it become a home for cats?
A home for catfish maybe. And LOTS of rust!
Thank God not every ocean liner ends up like the Queen Mary, Long Beach ripped out about 65+% of it and has really beat up most of the rest. Fortunately, the Rotterdam turned out much better
It would have be gutted either way for the asbestos removal. No way that could have been recommissioned (for anything) without a gutting.
But the pieces sold off remain to give us a reminder of a great ship. Restoring it to its original form would be too expensive as it would need to be a low income producing garage queen or to make it economically viable there would be too much change that it would be a tribute too itself. We all know how good tribute bands do.
A beautiful creation named United States, once the envy of the world, is about to meet its sad end in a few weeks.
There’s got to be some kind of allegorical meaning in that.
And it’s being sunk in Florida.
Sad, but I would rather see it sunk to help the sea life instead of being scrapped. They’ve got lots of pictures of the boat, and they are setting up a museum.
fun fact, if you want to see the same powerplant as the record breaking SS United States, just jump across the river to Camden, NJ and do the engine room tour of the New Jersey, BB62. Basically the same “drivetrain”.
So much high-grade steel being sent to the sea floor is just as wasteful as all the money that was spent keeping this relic afloat and docked for the past four decades.
When the furnishings and interiors were auctioned off in 1984 – it was over (I was there)
Meanwhile – QM2 still does Atlantic crossings for most of the spring/early summer – right after the annual World Cruise. My parents took it on their return to the States from Europe last summer.
How did they get to Europe? They took the Oosterdam from Ft Lauderdale to Rome that spring.
Because Mother does not like flying.
My wife and I plan some European travel once I’m able to retire in a few years. Because she needs to use a power wheelchair due to cardiac and blood pressure issues, travel by sea is how we’d prefer to do it. Flying is, simply put, terrible for anyone who needs to use a wheelchair of any kind.
Flying is terrible for just about anybody, but for most convenience is a far larger factor than quality or cost. And so people will continue to suffer just because the travel time is convenient.
This is a tragedy. Why, it’s downright reefer madness.